Always Our Children

Andrew Sullivan has treated his readers to days of hand-wringing as he deplores the spiritual obtuseness of the Church in failing to discern and celebrate the sanctity, the purity, the exquisite gift-of-self manifest in homosexual amours. He found the recent document so excruciating that he's prepared to withdraw himself from the Table of the Lord and the attendant sanctifying grace:

Leaving the sacraments would be a huge blow to the soul; but the pope just called the love I have for my boyfriend "evil." That's a word he couldn't bring himself to use about Saddam Hussein. How can I recognize what I know to be true with what the Pope has just said? I cannot. It doesn't leave many options but departure.

If the Pope only knew the beauty of Sullivan's love, the exalted tenor of transcendent communion, he might have written differently. Here, from Sullivan's own pen, is a glimpse into his spiritual depths -- still illumined, remember, by the sacraments that are so precious to him.

I was flattered at first. A burly, stubbled, broad-shouldered man, who could barely keep tufts of hair from sprouting from under his T-shirt corners, leered at me across the bar. He was drunk, alas. But it was five minutes to closing and this was Provincetown in July. "You know what I think is so ******* hot about you?" he ventured. I batted my eyelashes. "Your pot-belly, man," he went on. "It's so ******* hot." Then he reached over and rubbed.

No doubt he had an octavo edition of Casti connubii in his shoulder-bag.

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